Today's Birthdays 3/17 - Happy St. Patrick's Day

[do_re_milla]

Posted: 3/16/09 at 7:52pm

Shemp Howard 03/17/1895 - Nov 23, 1955 performer, member of 3 Stooges - A Night in Spain (Helen Kane); A Night in Venice; The Three Stooges films

Gloria Swanson 3/17/1899 - 4/4/1983 another source says 3/27/1899; wife of Wallace Beery (1916 - 1919) divorced, performer; studied to be an opera singer - A Goose for the Gander; Bathsheba; 1950 Twentieth Century; Nina (David Niven); film's 1934 Music in the Air (John Boles, Douglass Montgomery, Marjorie Main); Sunset Blvd; Queen Kelly; Sadie Thompson; Airport 1975

Alfred Newman 03/17/1901 - Feb 17, 1970 Musical Director, Composer. Instituted The Newman System during his stint as Musical Director at Fox, and it is still used today. This system is a means of synchronising the performance and recording of a movie score with the film itself. Uncle of Randy Newman - Funny Face; film's: Alfred Newman's career is one of the most prolific in Hollywood history. As well as composing music for over two hundred films, he acted as musical director, arranger and conductor on many more, in particular arranging many musicals for the silver screen, as well as arranging and conducting Charles Chaplin's music for his films, Modern Times and City Lights. He composed the fanfare for Twentieth Century Pictures, later to become Twentieth Century Fox, one of the most familiar pieces of music in the industry. His work spanned the genres, as composer, conductor and musical director, and garnered him forty-five Academy Award nominations - a total surpassed only by Walt Disney - from which he gathered nine Oscar statuettes. My fav: Wuthering Heights

Tamara Geva 03/17/1907 - Dec 9, 1997 wife of George Balanchine (? - 1926) divorced; performer - Whoopee!; 3's a Crowd (Alan Jones, Libby Holman, Fred MacMurray, Clifton Webb); Flying Colors; The Red Cat [interesting to note that even back then shows were prod'd on bway in assoc. w/hollywood. This 1 w/20th Century Pictures]; On Your Toes; Misalliance (Roddy McDowall, Richard Kiley)

Frederick Brisson 03/17/1912 - Oct 8, 1984 Producer; husband of Rosalind Russell (1941 - 1976) her death, son of Carl Brisson - The Pajama Game; Damn Yankees; New Girl in Town; The Pleasure of His Company (Geo. Peppard, Cyrl Ritchard Delores Hart, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Charlie Ruggles); The Gazebo; Five Finger Exercise; Under the Yum-Yum Tree; Coco; Jumpers; So Long, 174th Street; Dance a Little Closer; film's The Velvet Touch, Under the Yum Yum Tree, Generation, Mrs. Pollifax--Spy

Mercedes McCambridge (Carlotta Mercedes Agnes McCambridge) 3/17/1918 - Mar 2, 2004 performer - A Place of Our Own (Helen Carew, Jeanne Cagney); Woman Bites Dog (Frank Lovejoy, Kirk Douglas, E. G. Marshall); The Young and Fair (Rita Gam, Julie Harris); Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? [I bet she was fabu!][replacement]; The Love Suicide at Schofield Barracks; Lost in Yonkers [replacement]; Academy Award-winning actress: All the King’s Men [1949], The Exorcist

Nat King Cole 3/17/1919 - 2/15/1965 American musician, jazz pianist, bandleader: King Cole Trio; songwriter: Straighten Up and Fly Right; actor: St. Louis Blues; singer: Mona Lisa, Too Young, Unforgettable, Pretend, Ballerina, Ramblin’ Rose, The Christmas Song; actor: Cat Ballou; first black entertainer to host a national TV show; father of singer, Natalie Cole

Patrick Hines 03/17/1930 - Aug 12, 1985 performer - The Great God Brown (Fritz Weaver, Robert Lansing, Patricia Ripley); A Passage to India; Cyrano; A Texas Trilogy; 1977 Caesar and Cleopatra (Elizabeth Ashley, Rex Harrison, Fiddle Viracola); orig Amadeus

Rudolf Nureyev 3/17/1938 - 1/6/1993 Russian ballet dancer: defected to U.S. [1961]; danced with Dame Margot Fonteyn, the Martha Graham Dance Company; was artistic director of the Paris Opera Ballet

John Sebastian 03/17/1944 Lovin' Spoonful, composer - Jimmy Shine (Dustin Hoffman, Rue McClanahan, Cleavon Little, Dorothy Emmerson). "What a day for a daydream." tv's theme song "Welcome Back" for Welcome Back Kotter

Gary Sinise 03/17/1955 Producer, Director, Performer; founding member of Steppenwolf Theatre Company - origs: The Caretaker; The Grapes of Wrath; The Buried Child [wonderful]; 2001 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; film's Forrest Gump [who can ever forget the Lt.]; tv's CSI NY

Rob Lowe 03/17/1964 born in Charlottesville, VA! I never get tired of this Southern boy! Gimme More! Voted one of the 50 most beautiful people in the World 2000 by People Magazine. performer - A Little Hotel on the Side (John Fiedler, Tony Randall, Lynn Redgrave, Carol Woods); tv's & film's (what happened to "The Lyon's Den"?); St. Elmo’s Fire, About Last Night, Suddenly, Last Summer, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Contact, Atomic Train, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, The West Wing; Brothers & Sisters

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1926 The songwriting team of Rodgers and Hart hightlight The Girl Friend at the Vanderbilt Theatre in New York. Herbert Fields pens the story of a man who trains for a bicycle race using a butter churn.

1969 The Great White Way turns red, white and blue when 1776 opens at the 46th Street Theatre. The musical, with music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards and book by Peter Stone about the Declaration of Independence, stars Howard Da Silva, William Daniels, Ken Howard and, making her Broadway debut, Betty Buckley.

1992 Glenn Close, Richard Dreyfuss and Gene Hackman headline Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden which opens tonight at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. The plays sees plenty of holiday-appropriate green in advance sales, but the show receives mixed reviews and closes Aug 2.

1996 Stephen Sondheim and George Furth team up for a non-musical murder mystery, Getting Away With Murder, with a top-notch cast including Terrence Mann, Christine Ebersole, John Rubinstein, Josh Mostel and Jodi Long. It runs just 17 performances, but is memorable for its macabre ad. The logo, which showed a pistol-toting gargoyle, was changed after the closing notice to show the gargoyle with the gun pointed at its own head.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1969 - Golda Meir, a Milwaukee high school teacher, was sworn in as the fourth premier of Israel.

1993 Theatre legend Helen Hayes died at the age of 92. Known as the First Lady of the American Theatre, the awards and honors she received during her lifetime (including the first Tony for Best Actress) filled an entire room in her home. As if that wasn't enough, in 1955, the 50th anniversary of her professional stage debut, a Broadway theatre was named for her and in 1993, the Helen Hayes Awards were established in her name to honor achievement in theatre in her hometown Washington, DC.

(sources: IBDB, IMDB, NYT's ON THIS DAY, 440.com’s Those Were The Days, Playbill.com), reelclassics.com, bbc.co/uk

MillaShemp Howard 03/17/1895 - Nov 23, 1955 performer, member of 3 Stooges - A Night in Spain (Helen Kane); A Night in Venice; The Three Stooges films

Gloria Swanson 3/17/1899 - 4/4/1983 another source says 3/27/1899; wife of Wallace Beery (1916 - 1919) divorced, performer; studied to be an opera singer - A Goose for the Gander; Bathsheba; 1950 Twentieth Century; Nina (David Niven); film's 1934 Music in the Air (John Boles, Douglass Montgomery, Marjorie Main); Sunset Blvd; Queen Kelly; Sadie Thompson; Airport 1975

Alfred Newman 03/17/1901 - Feb 17, 1970 Musical Director, Composer. Instituted The Newman System during his stint as Musical Director at Fox, and it is still used today. This system is a means of synchronising the performance and recording of a movie score with the film itself. Uncle of Randy Newman - Funny Face; film's: Alfred Newman's career is one of the most prolific in Hollywood history. As well as composing music for over two hundred films, he acted as musical director, arranger and conductor on many more, in particular arranging many musicals for the silver screen, as well as arranging and conducting Charles Chaplin's music for his films, Modern Times and City Lights. He composed the fanfare for Twentieth Century Pictures, later to become Twentieth Century Fox, one of the most familiar pieces of music in the industry. His work spanned the genres, as composer, conductor and musical director, and garnered him forty-five Academy Award nominations - a total surpassed only by Walt Disney - from which he gathered nine Oscar statuettes. My fav: Wuthering Heights

Tamara Geva 03/17/1907 - Dec 9, 1997 wife of George Balanchine (? - 1926) divorced; performer - Whoopee!; 3's a Crowd (Alan Jones, Libby Holman, Fred MacMurray, Clifton Webb); Flying Colors; The Red Cat [interesting to note that even back then shows were prod'd on bway in assoc. w/hollywood. This 1 w/20th Century Pictures]; On Your Toes; Misalliance (Roddy McDowall, Richard Kiley)

Frederick Brisson 03/17/1912 - Oct 8, 1984 Producer; husband of Rosalind Russell (1941 - 1976) her death, son of Carl Brisson - The Pajama Game; Damn Yankees; New Girl in Town; The Pleasure of His Company (Geo. Peppard, Cyrl Ritchard Delores Hart, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Charlie Ruggles); The Gazebo; Five Finger Exercise; Under the Yum-Yum Tree; Coco; Jumpers; So Long, 174th Street; Dance a Little Closer; film's The Velvet Touch, Under the Yum Yum Tree, Generation, Mrs. Pollifax--Spy

Mercedes McCambridge (Carlotta Mercedes Agnes McCambridge) 3/17/1918 - Mar 2, 2004 performer - A Place of Our Own (Helen Carew, Jeanne Cagney); Woman Bites Dog (Frank Lovejoy, Kirk Douglas, E. G. Marshall); The Young and Fair (Rita Gam, Julie Harris); Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? [I bet she was fabu!][replacement]; The Love Suicide at Schofield Barracks; Lost in Yonkers [replacement]; Academy Award-winning actress: All the King’s Men [1949], The Exorcist

Nat King Cole 3/17/1919 - 2/15/1965 American musician, jazz pianist, bandleader: King Cole Trio; songwriter: Straighten Up and Fly Right; actor: St. Louis Blues; singer: Mona Lisa, Too Young, Unforgettable, Pretend, Ballerina, Ramblin’ Rose, The Christmas Song; actor: Cat Ballou; first black entertainer to host a national TV show; father of singer, Natalie Cole

Patrick Hines 03/17/1930 - Aug 12, 1985 performer - The Great God Brown (Fritz Weaver, Robert Lansing, Patricia Ripley); A Passage to India; Cyrano; A Texas Trilogy; 1977 Caesar and Cleopatra (Elizabeth Ashley, Rex Harrison, Fiddle Viracola); orig Amadeus

Rudolf Nureyev 3/17/1938 - 1/6/1993 Russian ballet dancer: defected to U.S. [1961]; danced with Dame Margot Fonteyn, the Martha Graham Dance Company; was artistic director of the Paris Opera Ballet

John Sebastian 03/17/1944 Lovin' Spoonful, composer - Jimmy Shine (Dustin Hoffman, Rue McClanahan, Cleavon Little, Dorothy Emmerson). "What a day for a daydream." tv's theme song "Welcome Back" for Welcome Back Kotter

Gary Sinise 03/17/1955 Producer, Director, Performer; founding member of Steppenwolf Theatre Company - origs: The Caretaker; The Grapes of Wrath; The Buried Child [wonderful]; 2001 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; film's Forrest Gump [who can ever forget the Lt.]; tv's CSI NY

Rob Lowe 03/17/1964 born in Charlottesville, VA! I never get tired of this Southern boy! Gimme More! Voted one of the 50 most beautiful people in the World 2000 by People Magazine. performer - A Little Hotel on the Side (John Fiedler, Tony Randall, Lynn Redgrave, Carol Woods); tv's & film's (what happened to "The Lyon's Den"?); St. Elmo’s Fire, About Last Night, Suddenly, Last Summer, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Contact, Atomic Train, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, The West Wing

SHOWS THAT OPENED ON THIS DATE:

1926 The songwriting team of Rodgers and Hart hightlight The Girl Friend at the Vanderbilt Theatre in New York. Herbert Fields pens the story of a man who trains for a bicycle race using a butter churn.

1969 The Great White Way turns red, white and blue when 1776 opens at the 46th Street Theatre. The musical, with music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards and book by Peter Stone about the Declaration of Independence, stars Howard Da Silva, William Daniels, Ken Howard and, making her Broadway debut, Betty Buckley.

1992 Glenn Close, Richard Dreyfuss and Gene Hackman headline Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden which opens tonight at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. The plays sees plenty of holiday-appropriate green in advance sales, but the show receives mixed reviews and closes Aug 2.

1996 Stephen Sondheim and George Furth team up for a non-musical murder mystery, Getting Away With Murder, with a top-notch cast including Terrence Mann, Christine Ebersole, John Rubinstein, Josh Mostel and Jodi Long. It runs just 17 performances, but is memorable for its macabre ad. The logo, which showed a pistol-toting gargoyle, was changed after the closing notice to show the gargoyle with the gun pointed at its own head.

ON THIS DAY IN:

1969 - Golda Meir, a Milwaukee high school teacher, was sworn in as the fourth premier of Israel.

1993 Theatre legend Helen Hayes died at the age of 92. Known as the First Lady of the American Theatre, the awards and honors she received during her lifetime (including the first Tony for Best Actress) filled an entire room in her home. As if that wasn't enough, in 1955, the 50th anniversary of her professional stage debut, a Broadway theatre was named for her and in 1993, the Helen Hayes Awards were established in her name to honor achievement in theatre in her hometown Washington, DC.

(sources: IBDB, IMDB, NYT's ON THIS DAY, 440.com’s Those Were The Days, Playbill.com), reelclassics.com, bbc.co/uk

Milla